Show HN: Grila – Calendar for keyboard addicts, always one keypress away | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Grila – Calendar for keyboard addicts, always one keypress away

lowtechguys.com

104 pointsalin2334 comments

This looks handy, but then I saw this:

> Read-only, a feature not a bug

> Grila can't and won't modify, add or delete events in your calendars and reminder lists. You can go fast and reckless with your typing, there's nothing to break.

I hope this changes in a future release (perhaps with an additional keyboard shortcut), since managing calendars and viewing calendars using multiple apps doesn’t seem seamless. Over a period of time, users may just go back to the app that allows the creation of calendar events.

Agreed. Maybe have an intentional edit mode?

>perhaps with an additional keyboard shortcut

Came to looking for this. Too bad.

I agree, I found I need it as well from time to time.

I'm thinking to add it as a global keyboard shortcut that would show the main UI + a typing bar where you can type a simple syntax for creating the event. As you type the date, the calendar will also switch to that date behind the typing bar so you can have an overview of other events before adding the new one.

I'm not sure about the syntax yet. Maybe:

    any text here is name of event =day-month-year :hour:minute #calendar-name @invitee1 !map-location

...anything after =day would be optional so for the simplest case one could schedule a dentist appointment on the next 14th day at 10am

    Dentist appointment =14 :10am

And each token should probably have autocomplete to avoid ambiguity.

Developer here, thank you everyone for checking out the app!

I also wrote a blog post on how and why I developed Grila if anyone's interested in that: https://notes.alinpanaitiu.com/SwiftUI%20is%20convenient,%20...

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Also many thanks to @dang for proposing a repost on this, it definitely got more attention this time ^_^

This is a beautifully-designed app, and I love that the proceeds go toward supporting your little brother's education.

Great writeup, you should make that a separate post. It’s crazy all the hoops you jumped through to track the updates. A simple calendar argues for an immediate mode gui, where the entire calendar just gets redrawn.

Not being able to add events is unfortunately a deal breaker for me. That means I need iCal/Google Calendar for adding events, and adding implies planning/browsing.

Generally I think digital calendars can be made much better, almost to the level of being the basis of an operating system gui. Searching and visualising for instance e-mail could be visualised in a calendar's month view. Weather is a given. Or viewing a git repo root in month or week view. Also keeping track of computer boots and reboots, or when a certain application was installed or updated, or when my computer went to sleep and when it woke up.

For a beefier (and pricier) option, Fantastical is another great one keypress option on the Mac: https://flexibits.com/fantastical

It supports creating events and viewing weather, though none of that other stuff.

I, like some other people, hate all these subscriptions (and prefer local-only where feasible). That’s one of the reasons I haven’t considered Fantastical. But its feature set is indeed a lot richer.

I used Fantastical for a long time but stopped when it went subscription only.

Just bought it, mostly because developer to developer I appreciate all the effort put into this, and I happen to be annoyed at the UX of the mac default calendar app.

Let see how that goes

Thank you for the support!

I have a few features in mind that would greatly improve the app's usefulness like fuzzy search to find/filter events, adding events using a terse tokenized syntax etc.

I'm still too busy with Lunar (https://lunar.fyi/) nowadays but I can't wait to get on adding those features to Grila.

Since switching to an Apple Studio Display, I've used lunar less, but it is a fantastic app (as most of the apps these guys put out seem to be). I had a bunch of carefully tuned brightnesses that I could use keyboard shortcuts to trigger, e.g. one for when on a video call, one for when writing code, one for more casual work (dimmer), etc. I like simple apps that do one thing well and just get out of the way.

Thank you for the kind message!

A note that if you're maybe using Studio Display with other non-Apple monitors, the next version of Lunar (https://lunar.fyi/) will add instant brightness syncing from Studio to the external monitors.

Given that the Studio Display's brightness is adapted by the system using it's accurate internal light sensor, it's nice to have that capability added to the other monitors as well.

Awesome, that definitely will be helpful if I add another monitor. Thanks!

Only for mac

Why not put this in the title

Considering how often osx-only software hits the front page my guess is that the Mac users heavily outweight the Linux and windows users on this forum.

there's dozens of us

I'll keep in mind to do it for the next post.

Just wanted say I've really been enjoying Grila and rcmd (from the same developer).

Thank you, nice to hear that!

Tested it. It would be nice if the trial period goes longer than - what was that - 1h? It needs to integrate in my workflow and within one hour I cannot tell.

Issues: * Please include 12h/24h switch in config options

The trial logic should increase the trial length based on some heuristics, but it seems those don't really work for an app like Grila that's not used as often.

I uploaded another trial that waits for a predefined amount of time: 2 days

Restarting the app should reset that, so it's more like a nag instead of hard deadline.

12/24h should be detected from your system region settings, but there was a bug that showed 24h as 12h. Try downloading Grila again from https://files.lowtechguys.com/Grila.zip to get the fix.

Please include Mac Store App in the title.

I cannot use this, as I'm on Linux.

Sure, I'll keep in mind to do it for the next post.

Needs more contrast, or at least a high contrast theme for light and dark. Yellowish beige on light beige is not easily readable for me.

You can do your own high contrast theme very easily, see this video taken from the front page: https://lowtechguys.com/static/video/grila-themes-and-colors...

Looks like a great tool, any plans for releasing it on Windows and or Linux?

Thanks!

Nope, I don't have plans on ever developing an app for Windows or Linux as I stopped using those OSs on a desktop/laptop.

Also I use SwiftUI to develop the UI for these apps which is native macOS only, so it's impossible to port such an app. It would have to be rewritten using Windows/Linux GUI toolkits and APIs.

alright, i'll bite..

am a happy user of Itsycal[2], and the form factor..

some context as to how I use the same, for my biases will be clear:

1. mostly see today's and tomorrow's events

2. click on event -> click on video conferencing link -> browser opens :)

this is, different.

1. default view is BIG.. without the calendar events to start off. with the calendar events, this is take up half your screen big.

2. only event names are shown, which is fine, until you consider that all the names are cropped and you can only see the "(first 5 chars) ... (last 5 chars)<space>(calendar name)" (this might be an issue long calendar names) [1]

3. events are not actionable in any form, which doesn't help when you need to get information, like, the meeting location, or video conferencing link.

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my initial thoughts: i'm not the target audience here. that said, good luck :)

[1] https://imgur.com/a/QW0Tqxz [2] https://www.mowglii.com/itsycal/

Yes, for now the app is targeted more towards personal life events, not work/office events.

I mostly needed it for planning trips with friends, seeing birthdays on a glance, checking when I'll be able to visit parents or when we scheduled the next concert/theatre play.

And I wanted my wife to be able to view the days and events I'm pointing at without her having to come close to my monitor, which is why the UI is so big.

Not everyone has these needs, I'm aware ^_^

Thanks for the feedback though! I might improve on the other use cases as well in the near future.

I think it wouldn't take much to make it useful for work use, too, and I suppose that's a much bigger market. I use Itsycal too, to get an overview of what's coming up (I think Grila can do that already) and as an easy way to jump into calls (it parses Teams/Zoom links and shows a little button to open them). That but with better keyboard navigation, like jump into upcoming meeting with 1-2 keystrokes, that would be pretty enticing, and a pretty good Outlook replacement when combined with Apple Calendar for those who don't really need Outlook.

Another happy itsycal user - I love how tiny and customizable it is.

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